here we go lift off
ascend to descend to ascend to descend to ascend
this isn't a running away it's a walking toward
I'm just a dream
Michigan mother to me
by mother I mean all the things glorious
and wretched, not even my siblings
had the same mother as me. The makings
of a heroine
stitches stitching
my skin to my bones, what kind
of thread could do that but
mythical
this is no ordinary love
(the work, dredging, scraping, shaking, all the hours of my head being shook from my neck, the minutes tick tocking while I shook with sweat, arduous work of the survivor/this is constant. I always have to be present, every inch of me present, even when surrendered, even when utterly let go. The inheritance of survivors is a goddamn factory, and not a day goes by you don't have to punch in. I mean, I punched out to be sure, a lotta days are just lost, I punched myself in the temple so hard I gave myself a concussion once, fact. I was singing, mid-song, literally beating myself up. Because I was so young I didn't know I could manage. But alas! My psychologist has taught me to recogonize that it, all of it, I manage, and well. Courage is how you hold your hand in the flame. How do you hold your hand in flames? By knowing even fires die out. I once put out a fire with my body; my spirit is a furnace that eats fire for air; I'm clouds. I've been working
very hard and well and now, well, now I get to go into a different kind of fire - the past, with my present entirely present. This is a first for me, on every level. Sure, things will be familiar. The old signs, old roads. I'm going to my childhood home, where I was loved and then loathed. Birthed and then murdered. She literally tried to murder me, because she couldn't manage her own emotions, her life. I'm not that girl she beat anymore, I carry her with me though. Like a kitten with its wet eyes, or a very old cat with its hard edges. Inside my life are many lives - multitudes. I'm going back to see if I can turn over any new rocks, to see if there are any other worms under there, ones I'd forgotten, so many of my days from that time are literal blanks. There are rigid tentpoles: the traumas. And then blank space. The work of dislodging, softening, watering those hard stones creates an environment ripe for newness, even if what's new has passed. It's time for me to re/member, more. And to see - well - how
undramatic the memories can be. To see how soft they've really become. It could be that nothing intense happens, that would be a real sign of growth and change. And that serenity is the culture I need to go even deeper into the trauma, past the things that happened into the changes they brought upon me. How did I change? I know who I am now, I know who I was before, I know who I was then - let me reflect on my life with a deeper vision. Also
gonna sing some rock n roll, yo. So here I go, Michigan, it's time for me to swim in medicine -